Editorials
8 Films to Die For: Revisiting the Original ‘After Dark Horrorfest’
The After Dark Horrorfest was a game-changer back when it premiered in 2006. Not only was this film festival devoted to the horror genre, it was accessible. Founder Courtney Solomon (An American Haunting) chose the best possible venue for this “ultimate celebration of horror”: the big screen. So from November 17 to 21, these hand-picked titles were shown at select theaters across the U.S.
There have been four “sequels” to the After Dark Horrorfest since then, but for many horror hounds like myself, the original one is a bit more meaningful. It was an exciting time for discovery, developing one’s own taste, and for learning what the genre had to offer in the non-mainstream sector.
So in honor of this momentous film fest, we look back at the first “8 Films to Die For”.
The Abandoned (Nacho Cerdà)
Pictured: Anastasia Hille in The Abandoned.
That February following the first After Dark Horrorfest, Nacho Cerdà‘s The Abandoned was re-released in theaters for a wider rollout. This Spanish-U.K.-Bulgarian co-production was the only movie from the 2006 collection to receive such an honor. And after watching this spectral, time-based story, it’s easy to see why The Abandoned was singled out. Anastasia Hille (The Hole) plays Marie, a woman visiting some inherited property in Russia. That is when she, along with a long-lost brother named Nicolai (Karel Roden, Hellboy), discovers her dark and forgotten origins.
Digging up the past is a frequently, not to mention ill-advised activity in horror. The Abandoned demonstrates that opinion with both force and style. It’s the kind of movie where the viewer is just as clueless as the characters, who are quite literally being haunted by themselves, yet the lack of explanations only makes their supernatural ordeal more intriguing. And if there is anything about The Abandoned that is properly disappointing, it’s Cerdà not going on to direct more horror movies.
Dark Ride (Craig Singer)
Pictured: The killer gives someone a splitting headache in Dark Ride.
The only bona fide slasher in the mix is Craig Singer‘s bloody ode to old-school body-count movies. Dark Ride is by the numbers in most regards, but that’s also part of its appeal. It does nothing but get back to basics. And while the conventional, no-frills slasher was struggling to stay afloat in the mainstream, indie offerings such as this kept the subgenre alive until the next major resurgence.
Dark Ride operates on the same premise as Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse; both movies have young people crashing overnight at a closed horror attraction, only to then be picked off by a crazed killer. Unlike Hooper’s underrated slasher though, this one plays more with its environment. That is primarily because Dark Ride‘s production values and set design are what make it pop. After all, this movie’s cast of potential victims is not designed to be likable; Jamie Lynn-Sigler‘s character and the other fodder are intentionally irritating so that their over-the-top deaths are more satisfying for audiences.
The Gravedancers (Mike Mendez)
Pictured: Josie Maran is visited by her character’s supernatural tormentor in The Gravedancers.
Combine parts of The Evil Dead with The Frighteners and Poltergeist, and you have a good idea of what the The Gravedancers is all about. After showing his comedic chops in The Convent, Mike Mendez followed with this semi-serious ghost story. There is still a funny bone jutting out here, however, the movie is ultimately more straightforward than silly. Mendez directs with so much energy that this movie’s wilder effects and moments are exhilarating as opposed to ridiculous.
Estranged friends (Dominic Purcell, Josie Maran, Marcus Thomas) come together to mourn a shared loss, but after dancing on graves as part of their grieving process, they accidentally summon three spirits. And not just any spirits either; the trio is now haunted by an axe murderer, a firebug, and a rapist. The main characters’ only hope, of course, is a pair of paranormal experts (Tchéky Karyo, Megahn Perry).
The Hamiltons (The Butcher Brothers)
Pictured Joseph McKelheer and Mackenzie Firgens, as Wendell and Darlene, get cozy in The Hamiltons.
This offbeat vampire story could be classified as “mumblegore,” what with the characters talking more than feeding and killing. That’s not to say the titular family doesn’t prey; they don’t spare any drop of blood coming their way. It’s just that their hunting habits seem more suited for a Jack Ketchum novel. The characters’ sense of brutality goes undetected by society, for the most part.
While The Butcher Brothers‘ The Hamiltons may look and seem amateurish, at least when compared to its peers, it’s really the most unconventional and envelope-pushing movie from the first After Dark Horrorfest. It will catch viewers off guard at least once. For more from this fang family, check out the sequel, The Thompsons.
Penny Dreadful (Richard Brandes)
Pictured: Rachel Miner in Penny Dreadful.
Richard Brandes‘ Penny Dreadful is a routinely overlooked example of movies that have both a high concept and a limited setting. Rachel Miner (In Their Skin) is the eponymous Penny whose extreme aversion to cars, in response to trauma, is ruining her life. And when a therapist (Mimi Rogers, Ginger Snaps) forces Penny on a road trip to confront that problem head on, they cross paths with a dangerous hitchhiker.
For a movie that takes place largely inside a car, Penny Dreadful manages to keep your attention and excite. Miner’s performance as a distraught and easily rattled amaxophobe is convincing. It’s a bit too convenient how the story managed to weaponize the main character’s fear — the thing Penny feared the most is now her only means of safety — however, the execution is solid.
Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu)
Pictured: A creepy doll from Reincarnation.
The other movie here to receive a separate showing on the big screen was this forgotten piece of “J-Horror” from The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu. That’s only because Reincarnation (originally Rinne) was released in its home country of Japan months before the first After Dark Horrorfest. When it came time to watch this tale of a haunted hotel with the other Horrorfest entries though, many viewers didn’t give the movie a fair chance. In fact, it’s said that some audience members left their screening, on account of the subtitles.
For those who did stay the whole time or sought out Reincarnation on their own, they were in for a treat. Admittedly more slow burning than thrilling, Shimizu’s neglected movie is an exemplar of contemporary psychological horror, Japanese or otherwise.
Unrest (Jason Todd Ipson)
Pictured: Corri English’s character, a med student, gets to know her cadaver in Unrest.
Rather than delving into the potential, reality-based horrors of med school, Jason Todd Ipson‘s Unrest depicts a more typical threat. Here a first-year pathology student (Corri English) and her lab partners come to find that their medical cadaver is cursed, and anyone who comes in contact with the body is doomed to die.
While Unrest approaches generic territory, its conventionality doesn’t make it unwatchable. There’s enough here to keep your interest, including a charming lead, the startling use of actual cadavers — not for the main one, mind you — and a dread-inducing soundtrack made more distinct by its use of a recurring “tribal” beat.
Wicked Little Things (J. S. Cardone)
Pictured: Lori Heuring, Scout Taylor-Compton and Chloë Grace Moretz in Wicked Little Things.
The final entry here is, like Unrest, a bit average. However, many would agree that “undead miner kids attacking folks up in the mountains” is an irresistible elevator pitch. The follow-through is sometimes patchy, but oh does J. S. Cardone (The Slayer) deliver the goods when it comes to creepy zombie children taking their revenge.
Wicked Little Things (also known as Zombies in other regions) doesn’t come up often, if at all, in conversations about killer kid horror. Maybe that should change because this movie is well shot and surprisingly atmospheric.
So, of these 8 Films to Die For, which one is your favorite?
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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